Chapter 10

X.

I took the kitchen knife and I held it like my mama showed me, ready to stab and cut if I had to. I was ready to hurt a man, or anything else that came my way.

I lived enough in thirty-five years to have seen and heard a lot of things good, bad, and otherwise. But I never heard nothing at all like that yowling yell the night we were anchored for the storm. The closest I could think to call it was to say, “It was an animal in pain,” but if you asked me what kind of animal I couldn’t have told you.

Whatever it was, it was big. Nothing small can make a noise like that.

And to think, that fool-headed gambling man tried to tell me it was the mud drums—as if I never rode on a boat before.

I didn’t know what was making that noise, but whatever it was, it was mad and it was big. And I didn’t want to meet it with nothing but my cheeks in my hands. It was coming from upstairs, I thought. Up on the hurricane deck, or maybe from one of the middle deck cabins.

Just as I thought I had a good handle on it—just as I thought I could pinpoint it if I held still long enough and held my ears right—it stopped.

And there was nothing but the rain, and I was standing in it, holding that big kitchen knife. I stood there stupid, getting soaked to the bone. It wasn’t cold; it was all right to be wet. But the wind was whipping up too, grabbing my apron and tugging it hard. The wind pulled at my scarf and untied it half a knot at a time. I used the hand that wasn’t holding the knife to hold my hair down.

I stared up at the sky and saw nothing. I listened to the night around me, but I heard just the rain and sometimes, the thunder cracking high and hard—rattling the windows and making the deck boards shudder.

I thought about the captain and wondered if I shouldn’t get to him and ask what was going on, but then I remembered he had a bottle of wine and I thought better of it. I’d said I was going after the cook, anyway. I’d go after the cook.

I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I sure didn’t like it.

The cook had a cabin down past the captain’s, on the next deck down. I had to run past the captain’s cabin to get to the stairs, so I ran. I was too wet to bother trying to jump between the raindrops, but it was almost worse when the howling stopped.

I mean it like this: while that howling sounded from stern to prow and deck to deck, at least you knew where it was—and it wasn’t right in front of you. Whatever made that cry was someplace else. When the noise stopped, the monster could have been anywhere.

Before I reached the captain’s cabin, even, I’d come to think of it as a monster. I just knew.

There were only a few passengers on board that trip, which was a blessing, I figure. Here and there, they were coming out of their rooms. They wanted to know what that big noise was.

Yes, well didn’t we all?

Somewhere on the other side of the storm, maybe outside on a deck, I heard the gambling man trying to tell some of the others that it was just the mud drums being blowed out. I don’t think he believed it himself, but you know how people get when they’re scared and they’re not sure why—and he was just trying to calm them down. I heard a phrase or two rise up over the rain, “Sounds bad, like the boiler’s going to blow,” and “Perfectly natural. Nothing to worry about.”

I guess he was a man who bluffed for a living, so maybe he was a better liar than I am and he calmed them down. Maybe he sent them back into their rooms.

I remembered that the nun had ordered him back into the galley, though. That’s why I was supposed to get the cook and we were going to hole up back there. That’s what the nun told us to do, and when she said it, I believed she knew more than we did about the noise. She was afraid too, but it wasn’t our kind of fear—mine and the gambler’s. We were afraid because we didn’t know what it was.

She was afraid because she did know.

Maybe she thought she’d spare us knowing, and that she’d be doing us a favor. I don’t know. I don’t know what she thought she was going to do about it. I don’t know why we did what she asked, either—or why we made like we meant to, if the gambling man didn’t stay inside the galley.

But I was going to find the cook, because that’s what I was told to do, and because it sounded like a good idea anyhow. I said it before—he never gave me no trouble, and like the nun said, he was a big man and probably real strong. I’m inclined to take care of myself, when it all comes down to it, but there’s no sense in being alone if there are others to help you out.

Jesus, I was running mindless. That miserable wail—it sent me all scattered inside. But I had that one thought—get the cook. I was going to go get the cook and bring him back and we were going to wait in the galley. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was better than nothing.

I dashed past the captain’s cabin and I dashed right past the hole in the wall where the window used to be—I dashed so fast, I almost didn’t see it. I drew myself up short and sharp. I slipped on the deck and fell down to one knee and I caught myself on one hand. I doubled back and I looked inside.

Jesus, Lord Jesus.

I should’ve just kept running.

The captain was in there—I knew it was him, he was wearing that waistcoat, the one that’s got the blue and red on it. It was unbuttoned, and it was in pieces—some of it on the floor—but it was on him mostly; and on the floor by the basin I saw his black boots with the bright shine on them. They were set side by side how he’d left them.

But the captain was in there—and he was in pieces like his vest. The whole room was splashed with red, and his chin was turned up, cocked up like he was staring at the ceiling. Everything was red. Everything was shattered—there was a thin coat of wet glass and slick rain on every surface. Puddles were forming on the rugs and on the bed, since the storm had come on in and made itself at home.

I’m no doctor and no nurse, but I know a dead man when I see one.

But with Jesus as my witness, I couldn’t have guessed what done that to him.

I turned away—I couldn’t look too long. I turned away, and I held hard onto my knife even though my hands were wet, and I ran.